Ohio Proves Tip of Spear for Obama’s Victory Over Romney

Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama rode the
federal auto bailout and an improving state economy to win Ohio,
a state both sides fought to win for its potential to decide the
U.S. presidential race.

Obama, Republican challenger Mitt Romney and their running
mates made dozens of campaign visits to Ohio this year,
including stops by both Romney and Vice President Joe Biden in
Cleveland on Election Day. It would take 77 days to watch the
221,595 ads aired in Ohio back to back from April 4 through Nov.
4, the most of any state, according to data from New York-based
Kantar Media’s CMAG.

With 100 percent of Ohio’s precincts reporting unofficial
results, Obama had 50.2 percent of the vote to Romney’s 48.2
percent, according to the Ohio Secretary of State.

It was the 13th straight presidential election in which
Ohio has picked the winner. No Republican has won the presidency
without carrying Ohio, and Democrats argued they could ensure
Obama’s re-election by delivering the Buckeye State because
Romney couldn’t reach the 270 electoral votes needed without
Ohio’s 18 votes.

“Ohio is at the tip of the spear, and the world and the
nation knows that Ohio is the firewall for Barack Obama,”
former Democratic Governor Ted Strickland said during a speech
introducing Obama in suburban Columbus on Nov. 2.

Auto Bailout

Throughout the campaign, Obama emphasized the 2009 federal
bailout of the auto industry, which Romney opposed. Ohio has the
second-highest total automotive industry employment after
Michigan, with almost 850,000 jobs from manufacturing, parts and
dealers, according to an April 2010 report by the Center for
Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The industry accounts for 4 percent of Ohio’s jobs, and
since 2009, the start of Obama’s bailout initiatives, auto-related jobs have increased by 6.1 percent, or 11,100 jobs in
Ohio, according to Bloomberg Government.

That has helped keep the state’s unemployment rate below
the national average, the analysis concluded. In September, the
jobless rate in the Buckeye State was 7 percent compared with
the U.S. rate of 7.8 percent that month.

“I knew betting on American workers was the right thing to
do, betting on American ingenuity and know-how was the right
thing to do,” Obama said during a Nov. 1 rally in Hilliard.
“That paid off.”

Plain Differences

The auto bailout issue helped Obama in Ohio because the
differences between the candidates were so plain, and Romney
never really had a good response, said Aaron Pickrell, a senior
adviser for the president’s Ohio campaign.

“It’s unique in presidential politics to have an issue
that is such a clear, stark contrast between the candidates,
especially on a state level,” Pickrell said in an interview.

Romney sought to blunt Obama’s support on the bailout issue
by airing television and radio ads in the final days of the
campaign suggesting that Chrysler Group LLC, following the auto
bailout, expanded Jeep production plants in China at the expense
of jobs in the state.

Chrysler has said the expansion won’t shift jobs from the
U.S. Obama portrayed the ads as a trust issue, saying, “You
don’t scare hard-working Americans trying to scare up some
votes.”

China Ads

The auto bailout was “at the top of the list of the
various issues,” that helped Obama in Ohio, and for Romney, the
China ads were “the final nail in his political coffin,”
Strickland said. Former President Bill Clinton also pointed to
the ads during campaign appearances in Ohio, saying Nov. 1 in
Chillicothe that “I’d rather have a president who governs on
facts.”

Ohio Republican Chairman Robert Bennett said it appears the
race was lost by the vote in northern Ohio and areas with a
significant auto-industry presence, and that in hindsight,
Romney should have done more sooner to defend his position on
the issue.

Bennett also said that, while it would not have changed the
outcome of the U.S. race, he thinks Romney would have won Ohio
had he selected U.S. Senator Rob Portman as his running mate,
and not U.S. Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, a state that
Romney also lost.

“It would have made a difference,” Bennett said in a
telephone interview.

Economic Perspective

Even so, Pickrell said Romney’s message that the economy
has faltered under Obama didn’t resonate with Ohio voters
because Governor John Kasich, a first-term Republican, said
repeatedly in public appearances that the state’s economy was
getting better. Kasich said it was because of his
administration’s policies such as lower taxes and business-friendly regulations, and in spite of “headwinds” from Obama’s
policies.

“Kasich was saying the same thing that the president’s
been saying, that the economy’s improving,” Pickrell said. “We
disagree about who gets more credit for it, but Romney’s never
had the ability to come in here and sort of lay out the economic
doom and gloom.”

‘Heart and Soul’

Kasich congratulated Obama in a statement and said he was
disappointed in the outcome and sad for Romney, who “poured his
heart and soul” into the race.

“Governor Romney’s ideas are sound and the ones we need to
pursue in order to get Ohio and the nation moving again,”
Kasich said in the statement. “In the coming months, I hope the
president and Congress can come together behind the kinds of
jobs-friendly ideas we so desperately need.”

Obama carried Ohio in 2008 with 51.5 percent of the vote
over Republican John McCain, and this year’s campaign didn’t
deviate much from the winning strategy of four years ago, said
Pickrell. That included focusing on all 88 Ohio counties to
maximize Democratic votes.

While Obama improved his vote percentage from 2008 in only
19 of the state’s 88 counties, he carried key swing counties
including Hamilton County and in central Ohio. Obama also
limited Romney’s gains in Cuyahoga, the state’s most populous
county, and in Republican southwest Ohio and rural areas,
unofficial vote totals show.

Grassroots Operation

Obama’s campaign also credited its grassroots operation in
Ohio, which didn’t completely shut down after his 2008 win. The
president had 131 campaign offices in the state compared with 40
for Romney’s campaign, which had vowed to make up for the
differences in resources with enthusiasm among volunteers.

After the Republican-controlled Ohio Legislature limited
the hours for early voting, the Obama campaign won a lawsuit
that went to the U.S. Supreme Court to restore in-person
absentee voting on the final three days before the election.

There were at least 1.8 million absentee votes cast in Ohio
before the election, the most in state history, and Obama won
about 55 percent of them, according to the Secretary of State’s
office.

The race was reminiscent of 2004, when incumbent Republican
President George W. Bush narrowly won Ohio and re-election, said
John Green, a political-science professor at the University of
Akron. The Obama campaign’s get-out-the-vote effort delivered,
and an improving Ohio economy, along with the bailout issue,
were too much for Romney to overcome, Green said.

“It was something Governor Romney was never able to deal
with successfully,” Green said in a telephone interview.

Senate Contest

In Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, Democratic incumbent Sherrod
Brown won re-election to a second term, defeating Republican
challenger Josh Mandel in the nation’s costliest Senate
campaign.

The race, which both sides said would be critical for
determining which party controls the U.S. Senate, attracted
millions of dollars in outside spending. Brown had said the $30
million spent against him was the most in any Senate contest and
that “this would not even be a race” except for that spending.

“Today in Ohio, in the middle of America, the middle class
won,” Brown said in Columbus. “We fought back against
secretive, out-of-state forces that wanted to impose their will
upon our state.”

Outside groups began airing television ads last November
and continued through Election Day. They included the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce and Crossroads GPS, the nonprofit group
founded with help from Republican strategist Karl Rove, as well
as the Washington-based Majority PAC, which supports Democratic
senators and candidates.

‘Trickle Down’

Brown, 59, a former U.S. House member elected to the Senate
in 2006, emphasized his support of the auto bailout, which
Mandel opposed. He portrayed Mandel as a self-serving politician
who supports “trickle-down” economics.

Mandel, a youthful-looking 35-year-old state treasurer and
former U.S. Marine who joked in speeches that he hopes to be
shaving when he’s 36, portrayed Brown as a “ultraliberal,
hyper-partisan” who has stayed too long in a Congress that
needs change.

In Ohio’s U.S. House races, Republicans emerged with a 12-4
advantage in new districts redrawn after Ohio lost two seats
following the 2010 Census.

In one of the state’s most competitive races, U.S.
Representative Jim Renacci, a Republican, defeated fellow
Representative Betty Sutton, a Democrat, after they were both
put in the newly drawn 16th District in northeast Ohio,
according to the Associated Press. It was one of only two U.S.
races pitting incumbents from both parties.

House Rematch

In the sprawling 6th District that stretches along the Ohio
River in Southeast Ohio, Republican Representative Bill Johnson
defeated Democratic challenger Charlie Wilson in a rematch from
their 2010 race, according to the Associated Press.

Democrat Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in the
U.S. House, won a 16th term by defeating Republican Samuel J.
Wurzelbacher in the new 9th District. He gained fame as Joe the
Plumber in 2008 when his “spread the wealth” exchange with
then-candidate Barack Obama was caught on tape.

In March’s Democratic primary, Kaptur defeated Dennis
Kucinich, her congressional colleague, after they were put in
the same district.